The end of breastfeeding…

If you haven’t read the entry immediately before this one, I recommend it–it’ll give you some more insight into my fears about the meeting I had with the psychiatrist.

I have to stop breastfeeding.

This is a loss for me.

When my son was born, breastfeeding was hard. I mean hard. It took weeks of practicing with different holds and pumping to supplement to get it down, hundreds of hours before it finally got easy. I nursed him until he was over 18 months old and only stopped when I reached my second trimester with my daughter.

With my daughter, it was completely different. She latched well from the beginning and lost a little bit of weight in the hospital, but they had me pump and we immediately saw that my supply was not the problem. Once we got home, she gained over a pound in a week and I didn’t need to pump at all. It was natural. It was easy. It was beautiful… until I became too scared to hold her. Damn OCD.

I’m heartbroken. I really am.

This is just one more thing that OCD has taken from me, but it is the hardest so far.

I know this is the right decision. I trust my doctor and I’m glad that she was willing to consider changing the medication because I wanted to but was also forthcoming about the effect it could have on me.

I cried when I put my pump away last night. I’m not one who usually cries, but I cried.

As difficult as it could be at times, I’m really going to miss breastfeeding.

Damn you OCD. You’ve taken over a month of my life and now you’ve taken one of the few things in my parenting I was really secure in and proud of. Damn you. What I wouldn’t give for a NT brain.

I’m mad, I’m sad, I’m in mourning. This is a loss, and there’s not really anything more to say about it.

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